Economies are supposed to serve human ends.. not the other way round. We forget at our peril that markets make a good servant, a bad master and a worse religion.
Amory LovinsRead
Today we have a temporary aberration called "industrial capitalism" which is inadvertently liquidating its two most important sources of capital, the natural world and properly functioning societies._x000D_ _x000D_ No sensible capitalist would do that.
Interpretation
The quote critiques industrial capitalism for harming the environment and society, which are vital for sustainable growth.
Amory Lovins highlights the paradox of industrial capitalism, which is currently undermining its own foundations. By exploiting the natural world and neglecting societal welfare, capitalism risks destroying the very resources it depends on for success. This critique suggests that true capitalism should be sustainable and recognize the value of ecological balance and social cohesion.
In practice
In a discussion about sustainable business practices, you could use this quote to emphasize the importance of environmental stewardship.
Economies are supposed to serve human ends.. not the other way round. We forget at our peril that markets make a good servant, a bad master and a worse religion.
Our energy future is choice, not fate. Oil dependence is a problem we need no longer have-and it's cheaper not to. U.S. oil dependence can be eliminated by proven and attractive technologies that create wealth, enhance choice, and strengthen common security.
There are severe limits to the good that the government can do for the economy, but there are almost no limits to the harm it can do.
What do you think a stimulus is? It’s spending - that's the whole point! Seriously.
Actually, in my advanced, high-falutin' frontier economics, I often work with what I define as 'money metric utility,' and I ask people, 'Do you really want that? What are you willing to pay for that?'
In America, people with lots of money can easily avoid the consequences of bad bets and big losses by cashing out at the first sign of trouble.
One of the evils of paper money is that it turns the whole country into stock jobbers. The precariousness of its value and the uncertainty of its fate continually operate, night and day, to produce this destructive effect. Having no real value in itself it depends for support upon accident, caprice, and party; and as it is the interest of some to depreciate and of others to raise its value, there is a continual invention going on that destroys the morals of the country.
It had been held that the economic system, any capitalist system, found its equilibrium at full employment. Left to itself, it was thus that it came to rest. Idle men and idle plant were an aberration, a wholly temporary failing. Keynes showed that the modern economy could as well find its equilibrium with continuing, serious unemployment. Its perfectly normal tendency was to what economists have since come to call an underemployment equilibrium.
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